Million displaced Pakistanis face tough choices before going home

ISLAMABAD: Aid shortfalls, ruined infrastructure and the lingering risk of attack are undermining efforts to return around one million Pakistanis to homes they fled after the military cracked down on militants along the Afghan border.

Of some 5.3 million people displaced by fighting in northwestern Pakistan in recent years, a million or so remain to be resettled under a programme the authorities see as key to keeping a lid on extremist violence.

The frontier regions, which are deeply conservative and hard to access due to rough terrain, have long been the sanctuary of fighters from al Qaeda, the Taliban and other groups.

Pakistan’s powerful army says most militants have been removed, but to root out the problem permanently, locals need to return and form a functioning society, said Abdul Qadir Baloch, Minister for States and Frontier Regions.

“This is a great responsibility that is on our shoulders,” Baloch told Reuters. “We should do it so as it rid ourselves, this country, of terrorism; not only ourself, but the entire world.”

People are generally anxious to get back, having lived in refugee camps or cramped conditions in towns and cities since being forced to leave the so-called Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA).

Men fleeing from a military offensive against Pakistani militants in North Waziristan queue to get relief handouts from a storage tent of the World Food Programme (WFP) at a distribution point for internally displaced persons (IDP) in Bannu

More than four million have already done so, and the government wants those left resettled by the end of 2016.

“MINI-MARSHALL PLAN”

With support from international donors including the United States and China, Pakistan plans to refurbish bombed-out roads, irrigation networks, markets, schools and hospitals in one of the poorest areas of the country.

“We want to launch a mini-Marshall Plan so as to develop this area,” Baloch said, referring to the financial aid package to Europe after World War Two.

Aadil Mansoor, assistant country director at the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), estimated around $800 million would be needed to resettle and rebuild the region over the next two years.

Though long-term infrastructure projects have better financial backing, short-term aid has been harder to come by, as donor nations focus on humanitarian emergencies in Syria and Yemen, he said.

Lola Castro, country director for the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP), said her agency was about $50 million short in donor support to provide food and early recovery aid to displaced and returning families this year.

“This is a very critical year, and unfortunately, as I see it, it’s the year where Pakistan is being left by itself.”

In addition, a government-led programme is tens of millions of dollars short of what it needs to help restore basic services and kick start the economy in the badly disrupted area, according to the UNDP, which helps administer the plan.

PEOPLE MAY LEAVE AGAIN

If insufficient funds mean people struggle to support their families after they return, they might be more susceptible to militant recruitment or leave again, aid officials said.

“People who don’t have basic social services – health, water, sanitation, food, education – what do they do?” said WFP’s Castro. “They move. They simply move.”

Internally displaced girls, who together with their family have fled military operations in the Khyber Agency, walk with a cow at the UNHCR Jalozai camp in Peshawar, Pakistan, March 15, 2016.

Syed Halim Dawar, head of a 14-member family forced to leave North Waziristan in 2014, said he heard some who had gone home did not have drinking water or electricity, and that the bazaar where he ran a successful business had been destroyed.

But the 55-year-old would rather return than continue living in a small house in Peshawar, where he has been unable to open a new shop.

Most people due to go back this year are from North and South Waziristan, two agencies where fighting was particularly intense and where militant groups have warned people not to come back.

“We will fight the army until the government vacates the area and an Islamic system is imposed in the country,” said Azam Tariq, a spokesman for the Pakistani Taliban’s Sajna chapter, which operates in both areas.